The invention relates to an apparatus for the continuous, uniform coating with a liquid coating material of a web passing over a counter roll, which comprises an air-nozzle arrangement, rotatable about its longitudinal center axis and disposed adjacent to said counter roll, for the removal of excess coating material from the web and the smoothing of the coating, said air-nozzle arrangement comprising two slot nozzles symmetrically disposed about its longitudinal center axis and displaced 180 degrees relative to each other, each nozzle extending at least over the width of the web, and the two lips of each nozzle being disposed on nozzle-lip holders mounted on the casing of the air nozzle arrangement.
A coating apparatus of this type is known from U.S. Pat. No. 2,766,720, for example. The rotatable air-nozzle arrangement of that coating apparatus permits one of the slot nozzles to be used to clean the opposite slot nozzle, rotated out of the working position, and to ready it for deployment while the coating apparatus is in operation. This prior-art apparatus incorporates no special provision for setting and adjusting the nozzle slot. Now it has been found that especially in coating apparatuses of this type for wide webs the nozzle slot will sag, with the result that its spacing from the web to be coated will be nonuniform.